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Being Overweight Reduces Dementia Risk
jones_supa writes Being overweight cuts the risk of dementia, according to the largest and most precise investigation into the relationship (abstract). The researchers were surprised by the findings, which run contrary to current health advice. The team at Oxon Epidemiology and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine analyzed medical records from 2 million people aged 55 on average, for up to two decades. Their most conservative analysis showed underweight people had a 39% greater risk of dementia compared with being a normal healthy weight. But those who were overweight had an 18% reduction in dementia, and the figure was 24% reduction for the obese. Any explanation for the protective effect is distinctly lacking. There are some ideas that vitamin D and E deficiencies contribute to dementia and they may be less common in those eating more. Be it any way, let's still not forget that heart disease, stroke, diabetes, some cancers and other diseases are all linked to a bigger waistline. Maybe being slightly overweight is the optimum to strike, if the recent study is to be followed.
Actually, studies tend to show that being slightly over weight reduces all-cause mortality compared to "normal".
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu...
Your all-cause mortality rate for overweight, and grade-1 obese are roughly 0.95 times that for "normal" weight. However, being grade-2 obese or more is associated with a sudden, very rapid increase in mortality rate.
Basically, being slightly overweight isn't bad, and may even be pretty good. Being more-than-slightly overweight is really really really bad though.
I've got to disagree with you there chief. Dementia and Alzheimer's might seem terrible from the outside, but I bet it isn't that bad on the inside. Cancer on the other hand is pretty terrible. Diabetes isn't a cake walk either. And all four of those conditions can kill you decades before a neurodegenerative disease is likely to strike. I'd much rather die at 90 from Alzheimer's than at 40 from a heart attack. But don't get me wrong, I'm all for spending money on neurodegenerative diseases. I'd just like to live long enough to benefit.
Easy explanation: They die before they develop dementia...
Another easy explanation is that the causation goes the other way: People with dementia are less likely to gain weight. There could be many reasons they eat less: less cravings, less ability to prepare food, less social interaction at meals, or just forgetting to eat. They are also more likely to smoke, which reduces appetite.
Well, that would work if they studied people with dementia to determine their weight, instead of studying people without dementia, then waiting nine years to see if they developed dementia...
Dementia doesn't work that way. It is not like the flu, where you are just fine until you "catch" it. Dementia creeps up on you. So even nine years earlier, there were almost certainly already behavior differences that would be amplified as the disease progressed. School essays written decades earlier, by people that latter suffered from dementia, are less creative and more likely to be just a list of statements, with less emotion and self-reflection. So it is likely that eating habits could also be affected years before the symptoms become obvious.